


The Touching Thing

by Princess of Geeks (Princess)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: "Blind Man's Bluff", "Rogue", Episode Related, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair's noticed that Jim touches him all the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Touching Thing

"Um, have you ever noticed how much you, um, touch me?"

"No." The white highway stripes reeled by. Jim tightened his hands on the wheel. It was gonna be a long drive up to Briarfield to what they suspected was a phony business address for smugglers.

"You kinda have your hands on me all the time, Jim."

"I do not."

"I don't mind, exactly; I think it's probably a Sentinel thing, but I figured I should, finally, actually ask you about it and I should have said right at first that I don't think it's inappropriate at all, it's nice. I like it. And maybe nobody has even noticed."

_Brackett noticed,_ Jim thought. "Well, I'm just an affectionate guy."

If Jim had looked, he would have seen the eyeroll. He didn't need to look. Blair waited him out. It was like he knew Jim would cave and tell him about it. How could Blair know that? Jim sighed. Blair still waited. Jim sighed again.

"It, it makes me feel better. It's, what do you call it. Grounding."

"Well, good. That's good." Blair settled against the seat like that was that, conversation over. Jim paused, incredulous that this was all. Wouldn't Blair grill him some more about this? He prodded.

"Is it?"

'Yeah, it's good. I think it's something to do with the Sentinel-guide thing, part of how I can keep you focused. Something to do with balancing the senses -- the tactile sense providing a grounding mechanism, perhaps even literally grounding. You know we're all just big, skin bags of electro-chemical impulses, after all."

"Well, whatever."

Blair was thinking. So loudly Jim could just about hear it. He stole a glance. Blair was staring out the windshield, frowning. But it was a good frown.

The ostensible shipping business was a boarded up storefront. They talked to a couple of sheriff's deputies, made some progress, drove back. Business as usual. But, Jim had had his attention drawn to his behavior, and that made him cranky. Defensive. Like he'd been told to clean his room or use more discipline on getting his homework done. He stopped touching Blair quite so much.

(_I have my hands on him all the time? Jesus._)

Blair noticed. Of course. He looked a little exasperated for a while, and then he took matters into his own hands, literally, and started touching Jim more, initiating it. The touching was gonna get done, apparently, no matter who had to reach out first. Affectionate punches, the hand on the sternum, the hand at the small of the back when they went through doors. _Well, okay,_ Jim thought.

Then one night Blair intercepted him at the foot of the stairs and opened his arms and said, "Hug." Blair looked so receptive, like your expectant annoying aunt who's determined to get a kiss, that Jim rolled HIS eyes and bowed to the inevitable and hugged him. Then Blair wouldn't let go. His hair smelled like peaches. He was warm and his shirt was soft, his shoulders firm and round under the flannel. His belt buckle dug into Jim's hip. They had not, Jim noted, carefully held their hips away from each other. He could feel Blair's package, not hard or anything, but definitely there, solid and mysterious, in the hollow of Jim's hip. Jim sighed.

When Blair spoke, his mouth was muffled against Jim's shoulder. "I remember you holding me like this when I was tripping on golden, after you got the gun away from me."

"Not a day you should dwell on, Chief." Jim brushed his lips in Blair's hair. Funny how much he was tempted to kiss the guys' skull. How much he was tempted to other things. He tightened his arms, as if to restrain himself and not Blair.

"I'm just saying. I know it's hard for you to be so touchy-feely with another guy, especially now that I've called you on it, so to speak, but I presume that it is indeed one of the ways I help you, so I noticed when you backed off. And I don't think you should back off."

"Every Sentinel needs a teddy bear, is that it, Sandburg?" But he didn't let go.

"Hell, I don't know, Jim; I'm flying by the seat of my pants here."

"Why should now be any different," Jim murmured, and then he did kiss Blair, bent his head and kissed him right on the mouth. More than friendly, less than amorous. Definitely an uncategorizable kiss. Then he patted Blair's shoulder and went up to bed. He noticed that Blair stood there for a while, unmoving, before he went on into his room and puttered around, restless, it seemed, before going to bed himself.

Jim regretted doing it. He looked at himself the next morning in the mirror while he was shaving, frowned, gave himself a brief, silent lecture. He tried to be normal. He wanted to drop it. What could Blair expect, anyway. Blair wanted touchy feely; touchy feely was what he got. So let Blair deal. So this was just one more thing going on in this new, weird territory Jim was now stuck in because of the senses. Visions of warriors and panthers. Mystical orders from spirit guides. Shamans conducting half-assed deathbed initiations in living rooms. Impossible coincidences. Generally, stuff tended to happen to Jim whether he wanted it to or not. No point in analyzing it to death. Just keep your head down, keep showing up and doing your job.

The first fallout from his stupid impetuous smooch was clear: Blair totally quit that "checking in glance" with him before putting his hands on Jim. Now, when he coached Jim through some kind of difficult sensory sweep, what Simon called "helping Jim focus," he touched him totally confidently, without checking for permission. Blair's hands lingered now, felt more proprietary on Jim's back, on his arm or shoulder. It wasn't fair how much Jim was enjoying this.

Standing in the smashed-out window of an abandoned factory, squinting through the dark at what Major Crimes was sure was an exchange of many small bags of heroin for many, many tight stacks of cash, Jim anchored himself to Blair's hand on his spine. Jim peered and listened, spinning his senses into the night's void, noting distantly that he simply never zoned any more when Blair was with him. Part of his denial, his shying away from the touching thing, was his own reluctance to examine the New Agey implications of what Blair did for him, but part of it was his own stubbornness. He knew that. He didn't like people telling him what he was experiencing, telling him what his feelings or reactions were. Blair did it all the time and Jim just ignored it, secure in their day to day. But it had been Lee Brackett, that rat bastard, who had been the first outsider to point out what Blair did with the guide stuff, and that was probably part of the reason Jim didn't like thinking about it. What did Brackett know about anything. The scummy traitor. When, in the early months, it was just Blair lecturing him about it, he could blithely ignore it and go on, because that was Blair's job, to know that stuff.

He watched the gang members until all the headlights had disappeared, driving away in three directions. Blair finished writing down the last of the license plate numbers Jim whispered. They packed up and headed for the station to write the just-a-bit-fuzzy memos that Simon would use in the morning to order more conventional surveillance.

Driving along in the dark, going home, Jim was congratulating himself once again on weaseling out of having to deal with the fallout from kissing his guide when Blair stirred, tapped his fingers on his own thigh twice, and asked, "Did you and Incacha sleep together when you were with the tribe in Peru?"

Well, shit. Apparently avoidance would only take a guy so far.

"Uh, why do you ask?"

"And are you being willfully dense or are you trying to piss me off? Because you're starting to."

"Why does me not wanting to answer a personal question like that piss you off? Why is my past sex life any of your business?

"Because," and Blair sighed, and recited like Jim was a fairly stupid eight-year-old, "I'm your guide now, and I don't want to screw this up, okay?"

"And you have to talk about screwing in order to not screw this up?"

"Well hello! Apparently! I thought we got over the "Jim's in denial" thing the first time I brought this up."

"Welll..."

"Right. When are we not in the "Jim's in denial" thing. Jim uses denial as a way of life. Fine. Forget I said anything." And Blair jerked and huffed and if they had been outside Jim knew he would have walked off, needing some space to cool down. Which really was pretty unfair, when you thought about it. Blair had apparently figured this all out already. Why did he need Jim to confirm the intimate details? Jim didn't like thinking about Incacha. Some things were better left alone. If you poked them, they would start bleeding, like a poorly healed wound. But Jim could tell by the way Blair smelled that he was really pissed this time, though. Not just normal-aggravated. Aggrieved and pissed.

Jim steeled himself against both the past and the immediate future. "Yeah, I slept with him."

"Okay, then... Wait, and you didn't think this was maybe an IMPORTANT THING FOR ME TO KNOW? For quite a while now?"

"How do I know? Maybe it was just us; maybe it was just him. I wasn't myself back then. You know that. There's a lot I couldn't remember until you made me start thinking about it."

Blair said nothing, sighed again himself, but he put his hand on Jim's thigh in the dark and Jim let him leave it there.

When they got back to the loft, late and uneasily full of fairly lousy take-out Mexican food, Blair brushed his teeth. Then he hovered, fidgeting, in front of Jim where Jim was sitting on the sofa, looking at the sports page from that morning, which he'd never had a chance to read in the insane busyness of the day.

"I want to kiss you now, but I don't want to be all scientific about it, but I don't really know any other way to ask you. It's a sentinel thing, sure, but you know it's an us thing by now, too, right?"

Jim looked up at him. Blair folded his arms. Jim reached up and Blair let Jim take his hand and Jim gently tugged him down on the sofa. Jim put his arm around Blair and Blair sighed. Blair leaned against him.

"I suck at this part," Jim said.

"Well, I don't," Blair said, and Blair turned toward him and tucked a knee up under himself and put warm, nervous palms against Jim's face and kissed him. It was a very nice kiss, lingering and warm. Their tongues got involved fairly quickly.

"You don't either suck at this part," Blair said, when they broke to breathe. Somehow they'd squirmed around and Blair was kind of lying against Jim's chest, and there was a hug going on along with the kissing.

"Good to know," Jim said, and kissed him again.

end.


End file.
